


is it worth it now?

by paradoxikay



Category: Persona 3
Genre: M/M, Unrequited Love, one-sided Jin/Takaya
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-27 02:35:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18188651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paradoxikay/pseuds/paradoxikay
Summary: What Jin wants most Takaya cannot give.





	is it worth it now?

They don’t have many secrets between the three of them, and while part of that can certainly be attributed to trust, it’s equally true that neither Chidori nor Jin is particularly adept at lying.

Or, more precisely, at lying to Takaya.

Chidori keeps her lips locked tight and very rarely hands over the key, but Takaya has had the master copy in his possession since the day they met. Jin, meanwhile, can convince anyone of anything, so long as he remains cloaked in the Internet’s anonymity – a stipulation that does him little good when interacting face-to-face.

Takaya has long ago committed Jin to memory, filed away each nervous tic and gesture and every subtle shift in tone, but not as one might memorize a lover, or kin; he’s memorized Jin as one might memorize a weapon one intends to utilize to its fullest potential, and there’s only the finest of lines between that analogy and the truth.

And so he knows that when Jin goes still and silent beneath his touch, as he so often does, it isn’t because he wishes Takaya would stop. It’s so terribly endearing, the way he stammers when a hand on his shoulder catches him off guard, how he adjusts his glasses to hide the heat in his cheeks when Takaya showers him in praise.

On very rare occasion Takaya considers keeping his distance, wonders if teasing Jin with glimpses of what he truly wishes for is more cruel than kind. He knows Jin as intimately as any person can know another, as well as if he’d pulled him apart and painstakingly reassembled the pieces (and that, too, isn’t so far from the truth), but he cannot even begin to understand desire in the way he knows, intellectually, that Jin feels it. Touch comes naturally, praise he can give; he would even offer Jin sex if he didn’t think the words might ring hollow and hurt worse than the wanting, but what Jin wants most Takaya cannot give.

Sometimes he considers keeping his distance.

And sometimes Jin comes to him, pale and sick and so very tired, and his arms open of their own accord to hold him close. It must sting, to know desire for something that is permanently out of reach, but the three of them know worse pain, and to refuse to soothe it, as best he can, would be cruel.

He does not – cannot – love Jin. But he can offer comfort, and when Jin blushes, fidgets, whispers confessions in the dark when he thinks Takaya’s too fast asleep to hear, he can take his own sort of comfort in knowing that there is some good left in what’s left of the world.

**Author's Note:**

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